


A Tale of Fire and Air

by muttthecowcat22



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fire Nation Victor, Inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender, M/M, Pre-Avatar: The Last Airbender, War, YOI AU Week day 1 - crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 15:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12656181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muttthecowcat22/pseuds/muttthecowcat22
Summary: At the beginning of the Hundred Year War, Victor leads the attack on the Southern Air Temple and is promoted to General for the Fire Nation Army.  Years later, when he is captured by the Earth Kingdom, he falls hard and fast in more ways than one.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> First, this has absolutely nothing to do with Game of Thrones. Sorry, but I liked the title anyway.
> 
> For AU week, I'm posting this small preview of an Avatar multi-chapter that I hope to publish in the future. This was supposed to be for day 1, but it's obviously late. Whoops!
> 
> For those of you who are familiar with ATLA, this fic will not take place during the show's main timeline, but rather during the time period in which Aang was frozen. The events take place close to the beginning of the Hundred Year War. Aang and all the other characters from the show still exist as separate entities from Yuuri, Victor, or any of the other characters that I will be writing about.
> 
> WARNINGS: This fic includes topics of war, such as violence and prisoners of war who are sold into slavery. Some of the themes will be pretty dark, and I might eventually up the rating.

Victor Nikiforov had always been satisfied with his life.  He never wanted anything more than to sculpt his fire into art, perfect his technique, and please the Fire Lord.  He had succeeded in taking his art to the highest level, or, at least, this newest campaign would take him there.  Never mind the technicalities.  It was the fire that was important, that would last longer than Victor himself.

Take for instance, the monk blocking Victor’s entrance to largest structure of the temple, his tattoos wrinkled with age, but his every move swift, skilled, and powerful.  The bodies of nearly the entire first unit littered the ground surrounding them.  The monk’s strikes of air created gusts powerful enough to unravel Victor’s tightly bound hair, despite his precise evasion of every attack.  Only three times before had Victor met a bender who could match him, yet this ancient, shrunken monk before him held his ground.  He could have probably defeated an entire army if he so desired, any army except the Fire Nation Army, that is.

“Colonel!” Georgi’s voice called from behind.  

So, reinforcements had finally forged their own path to the largest tower.  Victor watched the defeat settle into the old monk’s eyes as they surrounded him.  He saw the anger, hatred, the pain as he and his men delivered the final blow.  He had learned a long time before not to allow his enemies’ emotions affect him.

He ordered his men to advance into the deepest part of the temple.  He already suspected, though, that  _ he _ would not be hiding inside, so Victor himself flanked the side of the inner structure, searching through the carnage on the interior courtyard for a young boy with air master tattoos and light eyes - the current Avatar.

A lone tree stood at the edge of the courtyard, the bark covering its base singed to an ashy black.  Fallen in a nearly complete circle around the trunk lay another division of thirty or so Fire Soldiers, and just beneath the branches lay a lone air nomad, victorious but grounded, unmoving and burned bright red.  As Victor approached the scene, he could indeed distinguish the bright blue air master arrows coursing down the nomad’s arms and across his bare head.  He was still alive, the rise and fall of his chest the only movement remaining under the tree.

Victor stepped over the bodies of his fallen countrymen to kneel beside the nomad.  The movement of his chest spiked as Victor removed a glove and ran a bare hand down his arm, finding smooth, young skin.  Victor reached up, carefully, his other arm at the ready, to tilt the boy’s head in his direction.

And - it wasn’t him - the Avatar - it wasn’t him.

So, their mission had been useless, unless Georgi’s unit turned up anything - well, maybe not entirely useless.  They had managed to finally decimate the Air Nomads at the Southern Temple.  It appeared that this young air master was the only one still alive.

Victor should have killed him then.  He knew that.  He should have delivered the final blow.  He had done so often enough before.

The eyes, though, dark eyes that shone out of the burned and blackened body, they looked of death.  Victor had seen the look many times, etched across the outer villages of the Earth Kingdom.  The boy - or, no, man, maybe, he didn’t seem to be that much younger than Victor himself - knew that he was going to die, and he knew that Victor would kill him.

Despite his rank and ever accumulating list of honors, Victor did not enjoy killing people; he doubted many of his fellow officers did.  He had become accustomed to it, true, but his passion, his drive had always belonged to the fire, his home, and Fire Lord Sozin, nothing and no one else.

So, instead of dealing a fatal blow, Victor stepped away to survey the fallen airbender.  Severe burns covered more than half of his body.  He would die anyway, from blood loss or infection, with or without Victor’s help, and no one would be left anywhere near the temple to save him.  

Victor stood and climbed out of the circle of the fallen.  In the past, he had left a select few other wounded enemies just as he left this one.  They all died eventually, without fail.  He walked back towards the stone walls of the inner structure, the dark eyes boring into him until he reached the corner.  He turned back for one last glimpse and has never forgotten what he saw there: death had fled from the airbender’s expression, replaced by something that Victor had never seen before.  He had no name for it, but he reasoned it signified that the boy no longer expected to die.  

Victor should have killed him.  That expression could end a war.

He walked on, finished rounding the corner, and rejoined his men.


	2. Seven Years Later: Preview

Victor Nikiforov had never lost a battle . . . but no one could continue winning forever.

Victor’s head jolted against the side of the stone crate as it plunged a meter or so before hitting the ground.  He attempted to stand once more despite his near complete disorientation in the total darkness.  It stole his ability to see and to bend.  He retained his ability to hear, though. Voices surrounded him, so many of them on all sides.  He ran a hand through his hair to check for blood, unaccustomed to how light it felt since they had shorn it.

“Is that him?” one of the voices shouted, “We want to see him!”

“Yeah, let us see him!” another said.

“Stop this!  He should be in the dungeons with all the others!”

“To the dungeons!”

“Let us see him and then to the dungeons!”

“No! I heard he’s a beauty; I’m putting in my bid.”

“You’ll get burned.”

“I’ll keep him in the dark.”

“Then, you won’t be able to see him.”

“Shut up!”

“No! All of you be quiet!” yelled a voice in very close proximity to Victor’s crate, “I’m the one that dragged him off the battlefield, so _I’m_ auctioning him off to the highest bidder.  And you won’t see him until bidding’s over.” The voice paused.  “So, Victor Nikiforov, General of the Fire Nation Army, The Dragon of the North!  Who wants him?”

“I’ll bid 40,000 gold pieces!”

“40,000 right off the bat.  I know quite a few of you have more.”

“70,000 gold pieces!”

“Wait, I’ve got 80,000!”

“85,000!”

“Is that it, really?  No one wants to go higher?  Not you Gil?”

“I want him to go to the dungeons, but I’m not paying for it.”

“88,000!”

“There we go!”  
“90,000!”

“90,500!”

“Well, it looks like we’ve . . .”

“2 million,” a new quiet voice spoke up.

“Excuse me?” the loud voice near Victor’s crate asked.

“I said 2 million gold ingots; now let me see him.”

“General, are you sure?”

“Yes, now I want to see him.”  The voice remained quiet yet forceful, daring the others to ignore its owner.

“Okay, okay, sold. - Now stand back everyone.  He’s chained but still dangerous.”

The side of the crate that Victor had been leaning against fell away from him all at once.  He fell to the ground, landing on his shoulder, his hands being chained behind his back.  The streaming light above his head blinded him.  He turned his face into the stone beneath him to hide his eyes.  New shackles rose out of the ground and bound his feet.  No need for them, though.  He knew better than to try to run while surrounded, and he needed the sun in order to fight.

“Wow, he really is pretty,” the voices resumed.

“Look at the color of his hair.”

“He looks pretty beat up to me.”

“Your loss, General.”

“It’s really him.  That’s all I care about,” said the quiet but forceful voice.

Victor lifted his head in the direction of that voice, but his eyes had become too accustomed to the darkness.  He could make out the familiar Earth-Kingdom green surrounding him in splotches, but he failed to force his eyes to remain open long enough to focus.

He needed to focus, to learn about his surroundings, to plan an escape.

“Return him to his crate then,” the voice continued, and darkness once again fell over Victor with a loud rumble.

“What will you do with him?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”  And, that was the last Victor heard of that particular voice for quite some time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Please let me know what you thought in the comments!


End file.
